Published: Wednesday, 13th January, 2010 6:00pm

Council not facing up adequately to water crisis

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Westmeath County Council may or may not be to blame for the diastrous three weeks of interrupted water supply that has now spread to the extent that there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of households with no water supplies at all.

But there's a huge sense of anger at the Council for its approach to the problem.

Individuals - who in the majority of cases have never had to even ask themselves how the water got into their taps in the first place - have had Council officials tell them that the problem is with the pipe network into their own homes - even though there is clearly a problem at a larger level, otherwise, the Council would have had no need to switch off the water supplies at night, as it has been doing since the start of the year.

While the freeze set in in earnest last Friday night, there are homes in the county that have had no water since before Christmas. As the cold weather continued, more and more homes have been affected, to the extent that at the time of writing, huge numbers of people are still waiting and hoping that the thaw will happen soon, so their lives can go back to normal.

Now, many people are asking whether the Council didn't in fact create the conditions that led to the massive freeze-up of pipes, by turning off the water, and stopping flows through the pipes.

The Council is saying this week that its mains network is working fine, and flowing freely: but that hardly explains why in estates such as Greenpark, Ardleigh, Lakepoint, Ballinderry Heights, Gleann Petit, College Hill and so on, there are rows of houses without water - and the same problem is being experienced out of town, in areas such as Castlepollard, Rochfortbridge, Kinnegad, and other areas receiving supplies from the Council mains.

There has been much praise locally for the Civil Defence and the Army, who worked tirelessly over the weekend actually bringing supplies of water right in to houses that have empty water tanks, with Civil Defence personnel actually ferrying water into people's attics to ensure that they could at least have some emergency supply, and keep their heating systems going.

But questions have to be asked about why this has happened in the first place. Who is to blame? Is it developers who failed to lay pipes at the requisite depth? Is it the County Council for failing to adequately monitor builders at the construction phase, to ensure that they were laying the pipes at a depth that complies with the building regulations?

The Council has explained there was pressure on water supplies, as the freezing weather led to a lot of bursts in the pipe network - both at mains and private level.

This week, Council officials are reiterating their controversial complaint that contributing to the problem were householders who started leaving taps running at night to prevent their pipes from freezing - even though the counter argument to this is that given the mains have been switched off at night since the start of the year, no-one has been able to leave their tap running at night.

While the Civil Defence and Army insist they have delivered water to hundreds of houses, it appears Council officials aren't accepting how many people have been affected by the issue. It may be time they talked to the men who have ferried thousands and thousands of litres into individual homes at this stage. Or that they called to a couple of doors in any of the larger estates around town.

Fine: so maybe the pipes into many of the houses in town have been laid too low: but it was up to the Council to ensure they were being laid correctly. Perhaps it's time they went back to the developers and asked them what steps they are going to take now to rectify matters, and ensure the town never has to go through anything like this again.